


Appassionata

by Eliane



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, First Time, Happy Ending, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-15
Updated: 2014-03-15
Packaged: 2018-01-15 20:43:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1318570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eliane/pseuds/Eliane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'It’s not the end. But then, when it comes to you and John, it never is.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Appassionata

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Аппассионата](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11217960) by [hirasava](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hirasava/pseuds/hirasava)



> Thanks to [Jen](http://www.deadspy.tumblr.com) for the beta and you should all go read her fics @deadspy.
> 
> Pour Saael'. Toujours.

You weren’t supposed to fall in love. 

\---

Amongst all the things you’ve deleted throughout the years – children laughing at you, Mycroft’s condescending sneer, the rush of the drugs in your veins – some memories still spark from time to time, bitter and hurtful. You delete them again and again but they always come back. As if your brain wants to tell you that you should remember pain. That you should never forget – because it will happen again. 

You are eight and you can tell the state of someone’s marriage based on the shine of their wedding ring, but you don’t understand where Redbeard went, and you don’t understand why you are suddenly all alone again. Mummy tells you he’s not really gone, that you’ll find him again, but you know it’s a lie. You know there’s nothing after death, only corpses left for your eyes to understand, unravel, and decipher. 

One day you’ll learn how to cheat death. 

You are ten and children are laughing. You are eighteen and Sebastian Wilkes briefly shakes his head no when you try to sit down next to him in the Dinner Hall. You’re twenty and – delete, delete, delete.

The memories always come back.  
\---

You don’t remember being understood. Being accepted. Before John.

\---

You learn how to be cold; you learn how to be indifferent. Your looks become your armor and nobody can touch you. Nobody can hurt you. 

You’re twenty and strangers want to fuck you. You let them. You let them tell you you’re gorgeous and beautiful, you let their want wash over you. When they’re done you smoke cigarette after cigarette. You look at the sky and learn the name of every star. Then you delete them. If you can’t delete darkness you can at least delete the sharp contrast of light and beauty. 

You wear tight jeans and listen to Beethoven at dawn. You bask in the night’s silence. If you don’t sleep, if you try never sleeping again, you can believe for one tiny moment that everything will stay like this forever, calm and peaceful, that the sun will never rise again and the earth will never go back to men again, that it will stay yours, entirely and irrevocably yours forever. You want to believe that there is some kind of salvation at the end of your own ordeal. 

Sometimes you don’t eat for days on end and you can feel the rush of hunger, your brain racing and racing, and when hunger isn’t enough, when sleep depravation doesn’t work anymore, there’s always the ecstasy of cocaine in your veins. You’re like a supernova, waiting to implode, waiting to explode. You don’t know if the last straw will come from the outside, from one more mocking laugh or from the inside, from one more deletion. You can’t wait to see.

It sometimes feels like you’re in a theatre piece watching yourself run and run in circles. You’re watching yourself being bruised and battered. You’re watching your own destruction. You’re the gleeful spectator and Mycroft is the disapproving narrator. You’re wondering when you’ll wake up. 

\---

You’re thirty and you don’t let men fuck you anymore. You stopped taking drugs and you stopped wearing those tight jeans. You eat more; you sleep more. Youth has to pass and even you can learn how to be reasonable. You didn’t implode yet. Maybe you’re just a lone star without a galaxy. Maybe you’re meant to drift across the universe without ever burning bright. 

You stand next to corpses and tell Lestrade their life stories. You unwrap mysteries you can understand – you could never understand you own life. 

You wear tailored suits and long coats. You think it’s enough to keep going on. 

Then you meet John Watson.

\---

Suddenly you’re burning. You’re burning so bright you extinguish all the lights when you enter a room. And, John keeps smiling at you. 

\---

Those eighteen months are the best of your life. You solve crimes, and John is there, right next to you, and he never leaves you – not for long anyway. You sometimes try to push him, to see how far you can go. You’re rude and arrogant and heartbreakingly true to yourself but John only goes out in a huff for a night or two before coming back. 

You start getting used to it, John being there, John complimenting you, John loving you – because that’s what he does.

He loves you and you can feel it in every breath he takes, in every lingering glance on your mouth, on your neck. You’re deliriously happy and you never want it to change, you don’t want to make a move. John gets jealous of Irene and you want to laugh, to reassure him. Instead you accept his lie with a straight face and you put her phone in a drawer, never to be thought about again. 

You could live your whole life like this – you think. Walking this fine line of unresolved sexual tension, basking in John’s affections, in the warm light he provides. You’ve finally found someone you could orbit around. 

Then you have to die. 

\---

For two years you go back to your younger self’s habits. You start smoking again and you wear tight jeans, you let men fuck you and you close your eyes. You think about John, every time. You think about how his calloused hands would have felt like on your skin, you think about how warm they would have been. You think about his lips on your hair, kissing your curls – you know he wanted to – you think about his lips around your cock, you think about him worshipping every inch of you. You don’t cry when you open your eyes and see yet another man who isn’t John, who will never be John. You don’t cry when the fantasy you so carefully elaborated dissolve into nothing. You only smoke a cigarette and try not to be sick. 

One day Mycroft comes to your rescue from a Serbian jail. He tells you that you have to come back and you could weep in relief. You insult him instead. But, you don’t delete. 

\---

Then you come back. John isn’t yours anymore. It was stupid, you think, to believe John would have waited for you like you waited for him your whole life. It was stupid to think that you were the love of his life just because he was yours. You wish you had never came back. 

\---

You help with the wedding preparations because John is useless at those. You learn how to do serviettes and you smile at Mary when she smiles at you. You throw a stag night for John where it’s only the two of you and for one brief moment you think everything is fine again. You’re tipsy and you feel lightheaded. For all the drugs you took and the cigarettes you smoked you never drank a lot, but it’s a night for celebration. You’ll celebrate losing John forever in a few weeks time and it shouldn’t be so painful. You shouldn’t feel like your chest has been ripped open and bare. You shouldn’t feel like one more breath may be the last, may kill you for all you know. 

Instead, you smile at John and laugh with John and when he puts his hand on your knee, trying to be casual and failing at it, you ignore it; you play the innocent he thinks you are and you try to forget it. You don’t know what would have happened if you had taken the opportunity. 

Then, Tessa the nurse tells you your own doomed love story and you allow yourself to shed a tear for everything that will never be. You tell yourself you have the right to weep for her, to weep for a hypothetical future you buried yourself when John thought he had buried you. Everything is going to be fine. 

The next night, you go out and take back to Baker Street a man who looks nothing like John. You let him fuck you with your eyes wide open and when he tries to tell you you’re beautiful you kiss him just to make him stop. You will never burn as bright as you did in John’s eyes and you’ve never been one to settle for mediocrity. 

You weren’t supposed to fall in love. 

\---

The wedding comes and goes. You leave early. You don’t implode; you don’t explode. Instead you crumble on yourself and wish you still knew how to delete beauty. 

\---

Mary shoots you in the chest and all you can think about is how fitting it is that the metaphor finally became reality. You shouldn’t smile – you’re about to die – but you do. 

John moves back in and you try not to feel so happy it hurts, you try to think that John is hurting, that John has seen his whole world crumble under his feet in the space of a few minutes but you don’t care. You’ve always been egoistical and now is not different. John is back and you’ll have him as long as you can, you’re done being selfless, you’re done being heartbroken. 

You watch him looking at you again and you know that if you ever tried, if you let your hand fall on his knee, your lips brush his jaw, the wait would be over. He would kiss you and you would fall into bed and it would be glorious. You don’t. There’s still Mary’s shadow hanging over you and there’s still the unborn baby. John has to make his move and you won’t help him choose, you won’t be the one who ruined his life not once, but twice. 

You’re waiting for John but then again, you’ve been waiting for John your entire life. 

\---

You stand on a tarmac and the wind is blowing. This is it, you think. You will never know John’s hands on your skin, you will never know how John’s lips feel like pressed against yours. You thought you would have time, again, and you were wrong, again. 

This is the moment when you should say it, finally say how in love you are with him. How in love you’ve always have been. This is the moment you should compose him a poem, you should fall on your knees and beg him to forgive you – again. You won’t have other moments. In a few minutes everything will have been said and done. You should tell him you can’t live without him. Well, you can, but those days are only made of endless men fucking you while you want to cry, while you keep chain smoking cigarettes and hoping for something brighter, something better that never comes. Something like John. Those days are not worth living for. But, you did it once and you can do it again.

Instead of saying all the things you want to say you make a joke and he laughs.

This is enough, you think. I made him laugh one last time and it’s enough.

You feel like you can finally let go. 

\---

It’s not the end. But then, when it comes to you and John, it never is. 

\---

This is the end. 

You’re back in Baker Street and John is with you. There is no time for jokes anymore. Moriarty is back and you could die tomorrow, all over again. You don’t want to think about Mary, you don’t want to think about the baby. You’re done letting John choose. If you don’t make a move he never will and you can’t stand it anymore. You’ve gone through too much heartbreak and they were all about John. This is the end, you think. The end of us as we know it, but in a way, it’s also the beginning. 

You look at him one last time. His golden hair has more grey in it than when you first met him but in a way it’s better this way. You’ve both been through so much, you’ve both been broken and grew up and learned how to be whole again. 

You can do this now. You can love each other now.

“John,” you say and he looks at you. 

He looks at you like it’s the first time and suddenly you don’t have to be the one making the first move anymore. He’s there, right in front of you and he’s looking at you like he finally understands everything you’ve been trying to tell him for the past four years. His eyes are unravelling you and you have to take a deep breath. You can feel your pulse beating wildly, your heart hammering in your chest and this is it. This is it.

His hands are on your chest and they’re even warmer than you could ever imagine, his hands are on your chest and they are telling you, look at me. So you do. 

“How many?” he asks and you know exactly what this is about. How many before me, how many did you dream were me? How many of them fucked you while you were mine?

You can’t answer, you feel lightheaded and it’s much much worse than alcohol or cocaine, or hunger and sleepless nights. 

“How many?” he growls and you answer, “I don’t know.”

For one instant he looks positively murderous. He looks like he wants to tear every one of these nameless men apart and you take his head in your hands and say:

“They weren’t you. They could never have been you.”

You don’t recognize your own voice, you sound wrecked and ready to collapse but it seems to be enough of an answer and he finally, finally kisses you and you can only think that you should have done this years ago, that you should never have waited this long. 

When he takes you to bed it’s not urgent, it’s slow and everything it should be. He lays you bare and you can’t stop looking at him through your eyelashes. You want to eat him alive, you want to drown in him. He tells you how gorgeous you are and you don’t stop him. You think you never will. He tells you you’re the most beautiful thing he has ever seen and it feels like being torn apart, like you’re an exploding star. But, you don’t explode. You don’t implode. You collide into him. You fall into him and for the first time in years, you weep. 

\---

You weren’t supposed to fall in love. But, then you did.

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me on tumblr [here](http://www.sherlockeleven.tumblr.com)


End file.
